The ongoing controversy surrounding the Student Organization Recognition Policy may finally come to an end Wednesday. The Government of the Student Body will vote on whether to support the eighth and newest draft of the Student Organization Recognition Policy at the 7 p.m. meeting.

Matthew Fender, senior in Spanish and president of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Ally Alliance, said the individuals who worked on changing the old draft are basically satisfied with the new draft. He added that it’s the best of both worlds, giving rights to groups that would limit membership on belief while still giving a fair chance to others without being judged prematurely.

“I think the current draft kind of addressed almost all, if not all of our concerns so I think it’s a good solution,” Fender said.

Fender said he and others had been concerned with the way the older draft had been worded; possibly giving groups exemption from the nondiscrimination policy upon request. However, this has been fixed, he said.

John Burdine, senior in political science and president of The Rock, said the new policy is an improvement from the old one.

“It seems like the university’s intentions are more clear in this draft concerning the nondiscrimination,” he said.

Burdine said requiring a process to admit new members is another thing his group likes about the new draft. Burdine said the reason his group took issue originally with the nondiscrimination policy was because they felt their belief system could be threatened. The new draft, however, addresses these concerns.

“I like this version better than the last one,” Paul Keppy, sophomore in political science, GSB senator and member of the University Affairs Committee.

Keppy said depending on the debate, he is probably going to vote for the GSB legislation to support the new draft.

The ability for an individual to appeal being denied membership to a group was not something that was expected to be in the new draft, Fender said.

“That was another good thing that kind of surprised me when I saw the draft because it wasn’t something that we had specifically suggested that they include in their revision, but I think it’s a proactive way of preventing people from being arbitrarily denied membership,” he said.

There is one part of the new policy that Fender sees as a potential problem. The new policy states “upon individual inquiry,” groups may deny membership if they feel an individual does not share their beliefs as long as they are not denied membership based on their status.

“We still think that a group could apply their requirements with a sense of prejudice, but the appeal process is a kind of a passive way of fixing that,” he said.

However, this being a problem is not likely, Fender said.

Burdine said it was never his group’s intention to deny membership based on the status of an individual and they would admit homosexuals, with or without the new draft, into the group as long as they held the same beliefs. He said as long as individuals share the belief that homosexual fornication is wrong, membership would still be granted.”The status of their sexual orientation would not exclude them,” he said.

Burdine said The Rock does not currently have a formal membership process, but does see the benefit of requiring organizations to have one. Burdine explained the group might use the individual inquiry opportunity to make sure that individuals share the general Christian beliefs. However, he doesn’t anticipate getting too specific.”I don’t expect to have to be grilling people with questions about any of these protected status things,” he said.

Keppy explained the University Affairs Committee was given the responsibility to make a suggestion on the policy. Since this is the suggestion, Keppy thought that it would pass. However, if it does not pass, he thinks the University Affairs Committee’s work will continue.

“I assume the Student Organization Recognition Board would not be happy if there wasn’t student support so I would hope the University Affairs Committee would do more work on this,” he said.